title: Reporting vaccine complications: what do obstetricians and gynecologists know about the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Obstetrician-gynecologists are increasingly called upon to be vaccinators as an essential part of a woman's primary and preventive health care. Despite the established safety of vaccines, vaccine adverse events may occur. A national Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a well-established mechanism to track adverse events. However, we hypothesized that many obstetrician-gynecologists are naive to the role and use of VAERS.
  
  
  METHODS
  We devised a ten-question survey to a sample of ACOG fellows to assess their knowledge and understanding of VAERS. We performed descriptive and frequency analysis for each of the questions and used one-way analysis of variance for continuous and chi-squared for categorical variables.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 1000 fellows who received the survey, 377 responded. Only one respondent answered all nine knowledge questions correctly, and 9.2% of physicians had used VAERS. Older physicians were less familiar with VAERS in general and with the specific objectives of VAERS in particular (χ(2) = 10.7, P = .005).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Obstetrician-gynecologist familiarity with VAERS is lacking. Only when the obstetrician-gynecologist is completely knowledgeable regarding standard vaccine practices, including the availability and use of programs such as VAERS, will providers be functioning as competent and complete vaccinators.
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Washington, P.O. Box 359865, Seattle, WA 98104, USA.
authors.forename: L O
authors.initials: LO
authors.lastname: Eckert
authors.forename: B L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gonik
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schulkin
mesh_terms: D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006176:Gynecology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009774:Obstetrics; D010820:Physicians; D014612:Vaccines / Q000009:adverse effects*
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines